Clinton Says Government Needs to Combat Smoking by Youths

By PHILIP J. HILTS

Published: August 4, 1995

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3—
President Clinton said today that he thought the Government had a responsibility to discourage smoking among young people. But White House aides, faced by furious lobbying on both sides, said no decision had been made whether to allow the Food and Drug Administration to begin regulating tobacco.

Mr. Clinton said he was trying to find the best way to diminish the "terrible problem" of smoking among young people. "I think that smoking among youth should be diminished and the Government has responsibility there," he said. "I'm looking at what our options are, and we'll have an announcement on it before too long."

White House officials denied that the President had made a decision on a proposal by the F.D.A. to declare tobacco a drug and to introduce regulations to limit young people's access to it.

Leon E. Panetta, the White House chief of staff, said late this week that the Department of Health and Human Services is studying the steps the agency thinks should be taken to protect young people from the effects of smoking.

Mr. Panetta said the debate inside the White House was over how to put in place, "in the quickest possible fashion," measures to discourage youth from smoking. "There's a jungle here that could lead you into the possibility of years of litigation," he said. "There's a possibility that once you do something like this, you could run into real problems with this Congress.

"Our process is to try to think out is there a way to try to expedite this in a way that really gets to kids soon, to try to avoid some of those traps. I'm not sure that's possible. That's the goal."

At a press conference in Washington today, four health groups -- the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association -- announced support for Federal regulation of tobacco from two conservatives, the evangelist Pat Robertson and C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General.

About 100 religious, health and other groups have sent petitions to the White House, and 40 conservative Republican doctors have sent a letter to Speaker Newt Gingrich, urging that the issue be considered a health matter, not a political one.

The four groups also gave the results of a new national poll that showed that three-quarters of the population nationally, and in tobacco states as well, wanted the Government to increase its regulation of tobacco use by young people as well as advertising by tobacco companies.

At the same time, some in the tobacco industry have been encouraging people to call or write the White House and oppose such Federal regulation. The National Smokers Alliance, a 3-million-member, industry-sponsored group, is organizing the mailings and running the phone bank.

Two of the most important political supporters of tobacco, Senator Wendell H. Ford of Kentucky and Governor James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina, both Democrats, have been to the White House to urge the President to proceed with caution.

Last month, the drug agency passed along two proposals to the White House. One said the agency's investigation showed that nicotine in cigarettes was an addictive drug that should be regulated. A second proposal outlined several steps that the Government might take toward regulation. All the proposals focused on combating smoking by children and teen-agers.